National Geographic: Among the Wild Chimpanzees Page #4

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Pregnant with her fifth child

Flo was increasing her attempts

to wean Flint

Typical of youngsters his age

he resisted - still trying

to suckle and demanding

to ride on Flo despite

his large size

When denied his way

Flint threw violent temper tantrums

even hitting and biting his mother

"Perhaps because she was

too old to cope

Flo often gave in

and let Flint have his way

Later, this would have

grave consequences."

Later that year, the baby was born

and Jane named her Flame

Still attached to the placenta

Flame was just a few hours old

Because females give birth only once

every five to six years

a newborn always stirs much curiosity

among the youngsters

Jane wondered what the birth

would mean to Flint

Flint's behavior would be expected

to change with the new arrival

but instead he was getting worse

"Even after the birth of his sibling

when most youngsters become

more independent

Flint continued to pester

his mother for attention

And, more often than not

Flo gave in to his demands."

Even with Flame at Flo's breast

Flint sometimes tried to suckle

Six months later while Flo was ill

Flame disappeared

never to be seen again

With no baby to care for now

Flo stopped even trying to

encourage Flint's independence

Jane wondered if he would remain

an infant forever

Life expectancy of a wild chimpanzee

is guessed at forty to fifty years

Flo, now well past 40,

was feeble and worn

spending most of her time

resting quietly near Flint

"Although I knew that Flo

had become very old indeed

it was still a sad day when I found

her dead body lying in the stream

For me it was like losing

an old friend

For Flint it was like losing

his whole world

Flint stayed by himself close

to the place where Flo had died

He ate very little

He became increasingly lethargic

and depressed

And, finally,

in this state of grieving

he grew sick

Three and a half weeks

after losing his mother

Flint died too."

Today the name Jane Goodall is

almost synonymous with animal research

Accomplished author

speaker, and now a Ph.D

she is sought all over the world

A rarity among scientists

she has become a celebrity

in her own right

"... he wasn't having it at all

He wanted to follow

his adolescent brother."

Wherever she goes on

her annual lecture tours

eager crowds gather to hear

the latest chapter

in the lives of the chimps

"Any new, particular new developments

new behavior of the chimps?"

"Two quite interesting new developments

One is concerned with

territoriality..."

Though she welcomes the opportunity

to share her world

Jane keeps her visits short

Gombe is where she most wants to be

With her on this trip are her mother

returning for a nostalgic visit

and Grub, now 15

Though not even Jane

could have predicted

her study would last this long

it is 22 years since she first

set foot on Gombe's shores

In that time the country has gone

from British rule to independence;

Gombe once a game reserve

is now a national park

But friendships that span more

than two decades remain unchanged

Today permanent structures have

replaced Jane's lakeshore tent

and a staff of ten

Tanzanian field assistants

has been trained to help

observe the chimps

The men work in teams of two and

follow the animals seven days a week

In recent years they,

along with Jane

witnessed a startling turn of events

Like Gombe itself, the chimps,

it seemed had changed too

"If I'd left,

as Louis Leakey predicted

after ten years, we would have

had a very different picture

of the chimpanzees to that

which we have today

People's idea of the gentle

noble savage would have been

exemplified by the way of

life of the chimps

I started off studying one

community and in 1972 that community

divided into two and one part of

it moved down into the south of

the range that

the whole community had shared

Two years later a series of events

began which were amongst the most

horrifying we have seen at Gombe

The males of the larger

Kasakela community

the one's that we are studying today

systematically began to hunt down

individuals of the smaller

southern community to attack them

when they found them on their own

or in small groups and within

a full year period every one

of the seven males

and at least one of the three females

who had moved to the south

had disappeared."

"The sequence of events that occurred

during this warfare

were really shocking because these attacks

were not over in one minute

They lasted 20 minutes

They were gang attacks

where between three and six adult males

together attacked one victim

The victim was rendered senseless

virtually crouching on the ground

not even trying to fight back

And yet they would pound him

they would drag him

they would bite him

they would smash him

One of them had a broken leg

One of them had a great piece of

skin ripped from his thigh

And these were very

very brutal attacks

and I think it's a bit horrifying

to consider that just

because we now know how aggressive

the chimpanzee can be

this makes them even more like humans

than I thought they were before."

Only because Jane stayed on at Gombe

was the warfare discovered

Only because she remains there

still may it one day be explained

While the male gang violence

was a profoundly dramatic event

much of Jane's work continues to

revolve around the subtle intricacies

of day-to-day family life

Her observations of Flo and Flint

taught her just how powerful

a mother's influence can be

In the ten years since Flo died

Jane has followed her family

into its third generation

Flo's daughter, Fifi

is now a mother herself

Like Flo, Fifi is an extremely

playful and tolerant mother

Her son, Frodo, bears a striking

resemblance to his dead uncle Flint

Young Fanni evokes images of

Fifi herself as a child

And in adolescent Freud a visible

reminder of Figan as he matured

"Gremlin now watches Frodo

Getty much more active

than he used to be."

As she watches Getty

the youngest member of the Gomber

community secure in his mother's arms

Jane reflects on

ten other infants who

over the course of four years

met a gruesome fate

"There was one extremely horrifying day

I was in Dares Salaam

and we were contacting Gombe by

radio as we used to do every morning

And this strange message came over

that the adult female Passion

and her adolescent daughter

Pom, had seized a newborn

infant from Gilka

Gilka, one of the polio victims

a chimp I'd known since

she was one year old

And that this mother Passion

had killed the baby

and she and her daughter and her son

had shared the body between them

And I found this almost

impossible to believe

But when I got to Gombe a week later

it was indeed true

And over the next four years Passion

and her daughter Pom were known

to kill and eat three newborn babies

They were watched as they

tried but failed to catch two more

And we suspect that

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